Fanatics Fest has grown into one of the most exciting sports and entertainment festivals in the country—where fans, athletes, and genuine cultural moments collide. In 2025, it took over NYC's Javits Center and drew over 125,000 attendees, nearly double the year before.

My role was to redesign the ticketing website—the first place fans land when they start getting excited about going. We had about a month to overhaul every page, with one goal: make the site feel as big and electric as the festival itself, while actually making it easy to figure out what to buy and why.

The old site just didn't match the event. For something as high-energy as Fanatics Fest, the ticketing experience felt flat. Navigation was confusing, the visual hierarchy was all over the place, and the moments that actually mattered (like picking your tickets) got lost in the noise.

With the event growing fast and the clock ticking, the challenge was to build something that could actually convert— but also feel worthy of what Fanatics Fest had become.

The question we kept coming back to was simple: what if buying a ticket felt like the first moment of the festival, not just a checkout flow? That framing changed how we approached the whole site—we stopped optimizing a transaction, and started designing a journey from first hearing about the event to actually committing and buying.

Three things guided the work

• High-traffic moments: make key content beats work hard to move fast
• Immersion without confusion: feel big and alive, but stay understandable
• Speed and handoff: tight systems and clean workflows for shipping possible

With a one month timeline, iteration had to be fast and focused. Feedback came from the internal team and the client throughout the process, and most of it lived in the details. Not sweeping visual changes, but specific moments where the design wasn't pulling its weight, places where the visuals looked good but got in the way of actually using the site.

Navigation, user flow, and the ticketing experience took the most scrutiny. The question we kept coming back to was whether each decision was serving the user or just serving the aesthetic. That tension shaped a lot of the back and forth.

The highest stakes feedback came in a way that felt very real. Our VP reached out over Slack to let us know that Michael Rubin had been reviewing the work and had good things to say. Hearing that come through as a Slack message, 'you guys should be so proud,' on a project this size, at this pace, was one of those moments that made the whole sprint feel worth it.

In one month, we redesigned the entire Fanatics Fest website from top to bottom, every page, built into something cohesive and alive.

Landing experience with real energy
Motion-driven layouts and video do the heavy lifting upfront, creating an emotional pull before anyone even scrolls.

Navigation that gets out of the way
Content and ticketing flow naturally, so users spend less time figuring out where to go and more time getting excited about going.

Smoother moments where it matters most
Ticket selection and other high-intent actions are clearer and easier to act on, which is ultimately what the whole thing was built around.

One consistent voice across every page
From the landing page to the FAQs, everything speaks the same design language. Nothing feels like it wandered in from a different site.

The redesigned site launched into one of the biggest years Fanatics Fest has had. Over 125,000 people attended, nearly double the previous year, Saturday sold out across the three-day run, and the event hosted more than 500 athletes and celebrities.

It was also a high-visibility project internally. Fanatics CEO Michael Rubin was a touchpoint throughout the process and shared positive feedback on the work, which meant a lot given the pace and pressure of the timeline.

On the team side, the way I structured design files and workflows ended up making a real difference, keeping collaboration smooth and helping everyone move faster during a sprint that didn't have much margin for slowdowns.

This project was a good reminder that great design isn't just about individual screens. Especially when the stakes are high and the timeline is tight, what matters is thinking in systems.

I came away with a sharper sense of how to prioritize the moments that move users forward, how to hold onto creative ambition without losing sight of what's actually buildable, and how to set up systems that work for both the people using the product and the team shipping it.

What made this one mean so much to me personally was the level of trust behind it. It was a small, intimate team, and I was given real ownership—working directly with the developer, making decisions, and seeing them through. It pushed me to show up differently, and I think that's reflected in what we shipped.